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MIT Invited Criticism When It Asked Dorian Abbot to Speak


CHICAGO — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invited geophysicist Dorian Abbot to give a prestigious public lecture this fall. Natural selection seemed to be a scientific star studying climate change and whether planets in distant solar systems could harbor habitable atmospheres.

A wave of angry resistance followed. Some faculty and graduate students, University of Chicago professor Dr. He argued that Abbot was doing harm by opposing some aspects of affirmative action and diversity programs. In videos and opinion posts, the white Dr. Abbot claimed that such programs “treated people as members of a group rather than individuals, repeating the mistake that made the atrocities of the 20th century possible.” He said he prefers a diverse pool of applicants selected on merit.

He said he would never talk about his views on affirmative action for his planned lecture at MIT. But his opponents in the sciences argued that it represented an “infuriating”, “inappropriate” and oppressive choice.

On September 30, MIT reversed course. For award to professors, graduate students, and the public, including some of the best Black and Latino high school students, Dr. He canceled Abbot’s class.

“Words matter, and they have consequences,” said Robert van der Hilst, department chair at MIT. “Besides the freedom of speech, we have the freedom to choose the speaker that best fits our needs,” he said.

More than ever before, debates about speech and academic freedom on American campuses have flooded the sciences. Biology, physics, math: all have seen fierce debate over courses, recruiting, and objectivity, and some on the academic left have taken action to silence those who disagree on certain questions.

There are several fields cleared scientific terms and names seen as offensive by some andcitation justiceArguing that professors and graduate students should cite more Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American scholars, and that in some cases those with unsavory views should refuse to acknowledge their research in footnotes. Still, MIT’s decision, viewed as a high bastion of science in the United States, surprised some leading scientists. Debate and discussion, passionate, even wild, is the breast milk of science, they said.

“I thought scientists wouldn’t join the denial of free speech movement,” said Jerry Coyne, an honorary professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago. “I was absolutely wrong, one hundred percent.”

40-year-old Dr. Abbot spoke of his shock when he was told his speech was cancelled. “I really didn’t know what to say,” she said in an interview at her Chicago apartment. “If we are ideologically constrained, we will not do our best.”

This is a purely academic discussion. As soon as MIT canceled his talk, Robert P. George, director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, invited him to speak there on Thursday, the same day as the canceled lecture. Dr. George is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, which is dedicated to promoting academic debate.

Dr. “MIT behaved in a disgraceful way in surrendering to a politically motivated campaign,” said George. “This is part of a larger trend towards the politicization of science.”

The story took a different turn this week when David Romps, a professor of climate physics at the University of California at Berkeley, announced he would step down as director of the Berkeley Center for Atmospheric Science. His scientists and professors, Dr. He said he tried to persuade Abbot to invite him to speak, thus reaffirming the importance of separating science from politics.

“I think there are certain corporate principles that we should keep sacred,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

The history of science is no less prominent than any other field of learning, with its disgusting episodes of suppression and prejudice. Nazi and Communist regimes distorted science for their own ends, and scientists gave in, fled, or suffered dangerous consequences. some professors to point out aspects of this history As a cautionary tale for American science. In the United States, pseudo-race science, including the measurement of skulls to determine intelligence, was used to justify the subordination of Blacks, Chinese, Italians, Jews, and others. Experiments were conducted on humans without their consent.

The worst in this history goes back decades. However, faculty in geology departments in the United States has more white faculty than some other sciences. The departments have recently attracted more female professors, but Black and Latino candidates are struggling to recruit. Number of Asian Americans earning a geology degree has declined since the mid-1990s.

Dr. The controversy surrounding Abbot’s aborted speech also points to a tension between social justice and freedom of speech manifesting in progressive circles. Some faculty have come to view identity and racial disparities as more pressing than open-mouthed questions.

Phoebe A. Cohen is a professor of earth sciences and chair of the department at Williams College, and given that she has spoken against affirmative action in the past, MIT’s Dr. He is one of many who expressed anger on Twitter at the decision to invite Abbot to speak.

Dr. Cohen, Dr. He acknowledged that Abbot’s views reflected a broad current in American society. Ideally, he said, a university should not invite speakers who don’t share their values ​​in diversity and affirmative action. Nor was he fascinated by MIT’s offer to allow him to speak to MIT professors at a later date. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’m participating in this election,” he said. “In my opinion, the professional results are extremely minimal.”

He was asked what his impact was on the academic debate. Should academia serve as a bastion of free speech?

“This idea of ​​intellectual discussion and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectuality comes from a world dominated by white men,” he replied.

Stephon Alexander, professor of theoretical physics at Brown University, “The Fear of a Black Universe: A Stranger’s Guide to the Future of Physics” He said he was not familiar with the intricacies of this story, but noted that we live in an extremely polarized world. “The question,” he said, “is whether we join this culture or engage in constructive dialogue and perhaps show some compassion.

“The place for discussion and nuance is what a university is.”

This fight has caused Dr., who has described his own politics as centrist. It didn’t surprise the Abbot. A Maine native, he went to Harvard and came to the University of Chicago for a scholarship and became a tenured professor. He said he found a university in Chicago that continues to be a leader in upholding the values ​​of free speech, despite realizing that colleagues and students often remain silent when certain issues arise.

Dr. Abbot said his department talked about limiting faculty searches to female candidates and “underrepresented minorities” excluding Asians. He opposed it.

“Asians are an underprivileged group,” he said. “It reminded me of the quotas used decades ago to restrict Jewish students.”

He also spoke of the lack of ideological diversity, noting that a conservative Christian student was shaken and forced to feel alienated in an unyielding ideological climate. Last year she revealed her thoughts in videos and posted them on YouTube.

Loud complaints came in: About 150 graduate students, mostly from the University of Chicago, and several professors from elsewhere signed a letter to the geophysics faculty at the University of Chicago. Dr. They wrote that Abbot’s “videos threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department.” The letter said the university must make it clear that its videos are “inappropriate and harmful to department members and the climate.”

Dr. Abbot has since removed the videos.

Robert Zimmer, then president of the University of Chicago, Published a statement strongly affirming the university’s commitment to freedom of expression. Dr. Abbot’s popular climate change class remains fully subscribed. The storm subsided.

Dr. Abbot said he offered to show and discuss his videos with some graduate student activists, but did not apologize. Graduate students said they turned down his offer. Dr. “I just realized that if I offered to apologize, there would only be blood in the water,” Abbot said.

Newsweek was published in August. Dr. A column by Abbot and Iván Marinovic, an accounting professor at Stanford University, who has called for the renewal of affirmative action and equity programs.

They also supported eliminating legacy admissions and athletic scholarships that gave preferred admission to alumni’s children. Both programs disproportionately benefit white well-to-do students.

In the last three sentences of this column, professors drew an analogy between the campus climate of today and Germany of the 1930s, warning that with the rise to power of a race-obsessed ideological regime and this did to liberate thought.

The words were previously spoken by Dr. It rekindled the anger of the people who clashed with the Abbot. Dr. Even supporters of the Abbot’s free speech rights viewed the comparison with Nazi Germany as an exaggeration. But they added that it is not unusual for scholars to make rhetorical comparisons of the rise of fascism and communism.

“Can we be honest here? It’s not happening because Dr. Abbot used some particularly lively language,” he said. “This is a legitimate point of contention, and the claim that it makes students unsafe is ridiculous.”

MIT’s Dr. van der Hilst, Dr. He expressed respect for Abbot’s scholarly work, but went into detail in the Newsweek article. “It is entirely within his right to make analogies to the genocide,” he said. However, he added that this is provocative and suffocates the very respectful rhetoric we need.

He stressed that he spoke to senior officials at MIT before deciding to cancel the course. Dr. “He wasn’t the loudest shouter,” van der Hilst said. “I listened very carefully.”

Dr. van der Hilst, Black students, Dr. He speculated that if they learned Abbot’s views on affirmative action, they might well be repelled. This curriculum was established to explore new findings in climate science, and MIT hoped to attract such students to the school. He acknowledged that those same students could encounter professors, even mentors, whose political views contradicted them in the years to come.

Dr. “These are good questions, but somewhat hypothetical,” van der Hilst said. “Freedom of expression goes too far, but it complicates courtesy.”

Dr. van der Hilst, Dr. He added that he invited Abbot to meet privately with the faculty there to discuss his research.

Dr. For his part, Abbot said he teaches at a major university that values ​​freedom of expression, and luckily he has 30 years of teaching and research ahead of him. And yet the canceled conversation is a pain.

“There is no doubt that these discussions will negatively impact my scientific career,” he said. “But I don’t want to live in a country where we go and silence the discussion instead of discussing something difficult.”



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